Embroidering through Time and Space

Tag Archives: heraldic pouch

Embroidered Pouch – silk and metal thread on canvas, French 14th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York accession# 46.156.34

I honestly don’t remember when I first learned to make tassels. I have vivid memories of my sister and I wrapping lengths of yarn around the front side of cassette cases ( I’m showing my age here, are those even a thing anymore). Tying them, cutting them off, and then forming the head with with bits of burlap we had cut into strips. I don’t recall what that project was, but I am sure whatever it was we decorated with those tassels was fabulous.

I used the same basic idea to make the tassels for this pouch. Inspired by this bag at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most of the remaining tassels from this period are made with Turk’s Head Knot’s or similar type knot forming the top of the tassel. This particular pouch is a bit unusual because the tassel heads are wrapped and then couched with metallic cord.

Detail view of tassels

You might notice that the four remaining tassels on this bag are all different colors. I think that there was probably a fifth one in the center of the pouch at one time. Using unmatched tassels seems to be fairly standard. In this case the threads used are obviously the same color as the embroidery. And the red color used to make the tassel head are the same as the red in the main body of the pouch as well.

I used the same green in both the body of the pouch and one of the tassels that I made. The red and yellow are the same as well. But I used a different blue. I had originally ordered the bright blue for my piece but decided that it was a bit strong for the other colors. It works well in the tassels though.

Unfortunately this was the best image I could get of the tassels from the extant piece. Its a little bit out of focus but, you can still tell that the tops are made by wrapping red silk thread around a core and then stitching gold cording around the sewn ball. I’ve photographed the process for you.

Step 1- find some thing the length you want your tassel. You can also cut a piece of stiff cardboard to the size you want. I used a gift card for these tassels. Cut a length of yarn or thread, long enough to tie some knots in. This will be the hanger for the tassel so make it a little longer than you think you will need. Run it across your template.

Step 2- starting at the bottom of your template wrap the yarn or thread for your tassel completely around the card. If you are making more than one tassel write down how many times you wrapped your yarn. Wiggle your perpendicular cord up to the top of the template. When you are done wrapping, tie a square knot at the top of the tassel and carefully cut the threads at the bottom of the template. Then use one of the cords from the tassel body to make a half-hitch knot to form a little head at the top of the tassel.

Step 3- make a roll of linen the width you want and stitch it around the head of your tassel. Run a couple of stitches through the tassel to help keep it in place.

Step 4- wrap the linen cloth with silk thread in your choice of color. Use a few tacking stitches to help hold it in place if needed.

Your tassel should now look something like this. These tassels aren’t hard to make but a third hand would be useful. If you plan to make a lot of them you might want to rig up some kind of a jig to hold the tassel while you stitch.

Step 5- the last step is to couch a decorative cord, or thread around the head of the tassel. I couched mine in a spiral pattern, but use your imagination.

I’ve gotten a fair amount done in the last week or so. Last weekend’s winter storm allowed me to stay home in my embroidery nest, and not have to do much of anything else. It seems to be moving bit faster now.

I usually have a pretty good idea of where a project is going, and how to get there, but not always.

I was pretty gung-ho about this project and wanting to get it done for the beginning of March, so I started stitching while still having questions about how the stitch worked. Instead of taking a few hours and making up some test swatches, I just started stitching. Which led to do something I didn’t like, that didn’t look right, and had to be taken out. Which I hate doing, and was a huge waste of time, plus the time it takes to re-stitch the area correctly…bleh. So learn from mistake.

Don’t do what I did.

Long Armed cross stitch is a directional stitch in order to get the characteristic rows that kind of look knitted, you need to work your rows or columns of stitches in a back and forth method. Switching the direction that the long arm of the stitch is tilted towards. If you do it correctly you get a really cool textural effect, if you don’t it looks essentially like modern cross stitch . I didn’t have a complete grasp of that concept when I started stitching my first shield. The photo at the below shows the two different effects.

The white back ground of the shield is stitched with the long arm of the cross going the same way in each row. It’s kind of boring and very “modern”. The Blue wavy bit is stitched with the long arm of the cross alternating angles and creates row that almost look like knitting. That is the way the stitch was worked in the middle ages. And, the reason I decided to use the stitch in the first place.

In this photo you can clearly see the “knitted row” effect. Two rows of embroidery form each visual row. Medieval embroiders also switched the orientation of the rows to suit their design needs. In the pale heraldic motif the stitches move top to bottom throughout the lozenge. In the dark motif the bars are stitched side to side and the central design is stitched up and down. This switching of orientation is very different from modern cross stitching which is done left to right(or right to left depending on handedness). I had figured the orientation switching and worked that into my design.

But, (and here is the big important take away from todays post). I clearly remember thinking to myself, “Are they stitching back and forth, or from the same side each row? I should make up a couple quick samples and see if it makes a difference.” And I didn’t. I just started right in, picking the wrong way to do the stitch. Compounding the problem, I didn’t stop when I realized it didn’t look right. I kept going thinking somehow I would come to like it. I didn’t. So learn from my mistake, take the time to answer all your questions about the stitch. And if you don’t like something, take it out early on. Don’t wait thinking it will magically get better with time, it won’t. (That might actually be pretty good advice for a lot of stuff in life.) But I’m back on track now, and much happier with the way it looks.

I’ve been eyeballing some heraldic embroidered bags from the 14th century lately. https://www.pinterest.com/chulsing/i-think-i-need-a-heraldic-bag/ I’ve been looking at enough of them, at frequent enough intervals, that my Husband noticed, and asked “if I was researching a new project”. I hadn’t thought that I was…apparently, I was wrong… Turns out, I am researching heraldic pouches, and have decided to started making one. The first step was to decide on a design. Many of the extant pieces have multiple devices pictured on them. Are they depicitions of kinship ties , or simply decorative? I decided to go with kinship ties limiting the devices shown on my bag to two. My SCA arms, and my Husbands SCA arms. Alternating the two images 3 wide, and 3 high.

Something kinda like this

The next step was to figure out the scale of the design. I started by looking at the size of extant embroidered bags. There are a fair number of medieval flat pouches remaining that are in the 6 to 8 inches square range. Several names are used for them depending on when and where the bag was made. Sweet bags, relic pouches, almoners are some of the different terms used for bags of this type. The heraldic bags seem to be stitched in either long-armed cross stitch, or tent stitch. I’ve never done a project with either of them, but I kind of like the look of long-armed cross stitch. Here are some examples. https://www.pinterest.com/chulsing/long-armed-cross-stitch/ So I think I will go with that.

So I have 3 repeats across and 3 down, for a 6″ bag they would need to be at most 2″ across. That is bigger than the shields in the extant pieces. The shields in the historic pieces have fairly simple heraldry on them. The registered arms of both my husband and myself are a little bit more intricate. I don’t feel like I can go much smaller than 2″ wide and still have the piece be visually readable. So I am going with 2″x 3″ rectangles for my piece. If I stitch over 2 threads, on 36 count linen I will end up with a bag the size I want.

I also don’t feel like our arms blend together particularly well, so I am going to alternate the background color Green behind my white shields, and white behind his green shields. I think this will help tie the piece together.